Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology - Occupy Wall Street Library

858 Pages·2012·12.29 MB·English

by  Stephen Boyer

OCCUPY WALL STREET POETRY ANTHOLOGY

COMPILED BY STEPHEN BOYER, FILIP MARINOVICH AND THE POETS OF OWS

CREATED BY THE PEOPLE OF OCCUPY WALL STREET

A VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO THE PEOPLE OF OCCUPY WALL STREET AND THE
POETRY ASSEMBLY

THIS ANTHOLOGY IS AN ONGOING EVOLVING ANTHLOGY THAT IS CONSTANTLY
GROWING. AFTER ZUCOTTI PARK WAS RAIDED IT SEEMED PERTINENT TO GET
THIS DOCUMENT ONLINE. THIS DOCUMENT IS CONTINUALLY GROWING ON A
WEEKLY BASIS. IF YOU’D LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE TO THIS PLEASE EMAIL
[email protected]

WE LOVE YOU.
POETIC INTRODUCTIONS

POETIC INTRODUCTIONS

POETIC INTRODUCTIONS

POETIC INTRODUCTIONS

POETIC INTRODUCTIONS

POETIC INTRODUCTIONS

POETIC INTRODUCTIONS

POETIC INTRODUCTIONS
Poems Are The Ultimate Weapon Of The 99%

An Introduction By Danny Schechter

You see it here, dangling, in this book of Occupy poems, stuffed between improvised covers in a
binder, virtually chained to a book case in the most improbable People’s Library ever created.

It is a growing collection, tethered because so many read it, contribute to it and want it.

It is part of the amazing collection of the printed word, off the shelves of so many supporters and now
sandwiched into a corner of a park housing an occupation to challenge the money state, based just two
blocks away on the Street named after a Wall built centuries ago by slaves to hold back the Native
Americans who were the first people displaced from this Island to make way for today’s overstuffed
and over bunused courtiers of commerce.

Wall Street has long occupied America, but now, with passion and a high sense of purpose, Americans
and friends from all over, occupy THEM, and among the non-violent weapons in an ever expanding
arsenal of anger are words on the page, poems of every kind, written to tweak and challenge the power
of their many purses.

All movements need their poets to set the tone, to raise the questions and express the sensibility.

And so it is true, I must confess of OWS, where poetry lives in the hearts of this encampment of the
engage, this half-acre of enraged souls who have assembled here to take a stand, to fight the power, and
to build a community of the dispossessed and discontented.

There may be rage in this Park but also love and commitment without end.

We are here also in the memory of poets who have come before, like Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman whose
poems and action echoed those to fought for the union to conquer slavery.

Whitman once said: “To have great poetry there must be great audiences, too,” And Occupy Wall Street
is a great audience with poety readings every week among the mic checks and the militancy,

We are here in the spirit of Russia’s Mikhail Lermontov whose Death of the Poet was a Je accuse
after the death of the great Pushkin in which he addressed the inner circle, the 1% of that age,
condemning, Wkipedia tells us, “Russian high society of complicity in Pushkin's death. Without
mincing words, it portrays that society as a cabal of self-interested venomous wretches "huddling about
the throne in a greedy throng", "the hangmen who kill liberty, genius, and glory" about to suffer the
apocalyptic judgment of God.”

Oh, how that description rings true of those who labor as hostile neighbors to the righteous zeal in
Zucotti Park.

And, Lets not forget the beats like Allen Ginsberg who lived in Lower East Side New York, and whose
life and work was a testament to the duty to provoke and inform, to fuse poesy and politics. Allen is
here in spirit as are so many other New Yorkers who powered movements in years gone by.
And I think of a less well known lover of this city, my mom, Ruth Lisa Schechter who published none
books of poetry and staged readings to help the youngest victims of the Vietnam War,

The poetry in this book stirs us to think greater thoughts and pursue deeper visions. It is a part of the
occupation but also transcends.

Savor it all and praise the purveyors, praise those with a word of celebration and personal insight for
what so many are struggling so hard to achieve.

They are occupying our souls, or trying to.

Read on. Write On. Fight On.

November 9, 2011

Danny Schechter, The News Dissector, is a bloogger (Newsdissector.com), Filmmaker,
(Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com), journalist and activist, Comments to [email protected].

The OWS Poetry Anthology Story
By, Stephen Boyer

Poetry was my entry to Occupy Wall Street. My first few days in the park, I walked around listening,
soaking in the vibrant energy and diverse conversations. I wanted to be part of the new imagining of
community and politics but didn’t know how. The third day, I was introduced to Travis Holloway, who
was helping form the Poetry Assembly, a weekly re-imaging of a traditional poetry reading:

“The reading will take the form of a direct democratic assembly. Poets will add their names and
be chosen by lot. We have no headliners or special privileges but rather presume the equality of
each poet's voice and to try to listen to one another. We ask that each poet try to keep their
poems under 3 minutes. And we hope that poets will select poems that they feel are relevant to
the hopes and demands of the people here."
Text from the November 25th Poetry Assembly@OccupyWallStreet announcement.

The idea of the Assembly immediately excited me and I joined Travis in painting cardboard signs, with
no realization that I was participating in the beginning of my deep involvement in the movement.

The OWS Poetry Anthology was born the second week of the Poetry Assembly. Earlier in the day, I had
gone to Liberty Plaza to make signs for the Assembly. I had been asked to be the facilitator for the
evening and to ensure that the assembly ran smoothly. As I made cardboard signs, I met the People’s
Library librarians for the first time and immediately fell in love with the few bins of books the library
had collected, safeguarded by tarps. The librarians enthusiastically expressed gratitude for the Poetry
Assembly and through those initial conversations; it was made apparent the freewheeling Poetry
Assembly needed to be archived for the future and for the people coming through the People’s Library
on days that the Assembly was not taking place. I initially imagined the Poetry Anthology would exist
as a few poems stapled together sitting in the People’s Library, just a small document of the multitudes
of voices who had been moved by the Occupations happenings and had been inspired to reflect on
them. The Library loved the idea and immediately took it on as their publication. They offered to
provide the necessary funds to cover printing and with that I joined the People’s Library as a
librarian. All there was left to do was to ask the Poetry Assembly if they liked the idea. The response
was unanimously positive amongst the poets who had assembled. The poet Filip Marinovich
immediately offered to join in the compiling of poems. A few days after the anthology was announced,
the poets Eliot Katz and Vivian Demuth came to OWS to discuss the project and offered to reach out to
America’s great living poets – Anne Waldman, The Allen Ginsberg Society, Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Wanda Coleman, Michael McClure, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Frank Sherlock, Eileen Myles,
Adrienne Rich, and more.

Once I moved into the park, life became a whirlwind of participation, conversations bleeding into one
another – “how to survive a maritime disaster” to “Broadway theater” to “global politics” to
“philosophy” to “queer issues” and ever onward. Time warped, hours became days and it felt like I
hadn’t even blinked an eye. Without realizing it, I had fully given myself to the OWS movement and
the People’s Library. Life in the park was a continually ecstatic outburst of psychedelic transformation,
philosophers engaged gardeners, poets engaged politicians and the freewheeling demonstrators
engaged the vampiric Wall St. in unflinching, self reflecting, ongoing conversation. Filip Marinovich
said it best in an interview with the Huffington Post, “We are psychically echoing and playing
variations on each others' waking dreams of being here at Liberty. The grove of trees here is the Greek
Akademia Democratic Polis grove of trees moving and the anthology pages are its leaves falling in the
American Fall Wind. Welcome to Sherwood Forest, merry human.” For as beautiful and exhilarating as
all of this was however, life in the park was also exhausting and trying… if you think life with a few
roommates is hard, try living with thousands of people all bent out of shape that their lives have
become overshadowed by a vampire nation. Needless to say, working on the Poetry Anthology proved
to continually be the highlight of my week, keeping me focused on the long term goal and adding
sanity to my days.

For three weeks, the poetry anthology lived exclusively in the People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street.
We reasoned its limited presence gave it a powerful and magickal aura. Visitors in the library
seemingly never let it rest. It was our gleaming diamond. Journalists wrote about it, visitors anxiously
thumbed its pages; the original copies were stolen and replaced all in a very short amount of time. It
soon became apparent that more copies needed to surface as demand to read the anthology grew. We
placed a copy at Poet’s House. People that never felt compelled or ready to enter Liberty Sq. found that
copy and suddenly wanted to visit and see the spectacle that these poets had engaged. Things were
active and beautiful.

Then on November 14th, 2011 the NYPD raided Liberty Plaza. The Nation very generously told the
tale of the OWS Anthology and my relation to it:

“During the raid, Stephen Boyer, a poet, friend and OWS librarian, read poems from the
Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (see peopleslibrary.wordpress.com) aloud directly into the
faces of riot police. As they pushed us away from the park with shields, fists, billy clubs and
tear gas, I stood next to Stephen and watched while he yelled poetry at the top of his lungs into
the oncoming army of riot police. Then, something incredible happened. Several of the police
leaned in closer to hear the poetry. They lifted their helmet shields slightly to catch the words
Stephen was shouting out to them, even while their fellow cops continued to stampede us. The
next day, an officer who was guarding the entrance to Zuccotti Park told Stephen how touched
he was by the poetry, how moved he was to see that we cared enough about words and books
that we would risk violent treatment and arrest just to defend our love of books and the wisdom
they contain.”
A couple days after the raid, the poet Sarah Sarai and I met up and turned the Poetry Anthology into a
PDF so we could get it onto the People’s Library wordpress site. Now that the People’s Library had
been destroyed, it became necessary to give it a new home. The Internet seemed like the obvious
choice in order to spread the message across the globe instantaneously and have the anthology
occupying computer screens everywhere. The anthology went online with instructions on “how to
print” and “how to make your own copy” so people everywhere could place copies in their
community. In this way the anthology demonstrated the power of limited access and total access. Since
the anthology has gone online, I’ve received numerous emails from people from across the world that
have told me they’ve printed the anthology and placed a copy in their community and community is
what Occupy Wall Street is all about. Without the community that banded around the anthology, it
would have never happened.

My personal life has always been a constant rotation, with various interests taking more dominant roles
depending on the outside forces and astrological aligning at play. Currently, political engagement has
superseded the more frivolous art for art’s sake attitude of last year, my first in New York
City. Memories of my “face covered in glitter” still up-sparkles in the ether, however, and always will
no matter what mask I’m currently wearing. And I know I’m not alone in my ever widening mystical
lifestyle. How could we ever expect politics to change unless we radically re-imagine. So it’s this
sentiment exactly that guided my decision to push for a politically minded anthology that set no
parameters on poetic content and form. After all, who is to say what is and what isn’t? This movement
is about constant re-definition, about the open ended and perpetual, the imagined and the re-
imagined. We have been placed in the middle of a transitional scenario that has the possibility to
remain fluid and that very well could carry on forever. This is the birth of a new mindset, a new way of
addressing the universe, the powers that be and each other.
This anthology is in no way intended to be our guide. It is merely meant to illuminate and inspire and
I hope that in its pages you come closer to tasting the spark of beauty and excitement that led to this
document’s creation.

So with that, I’d like to acknowledge the community of people whose input, conversations, support and
help shaped this anthology (in no particular order): Cory Rockliff, Filip Marinovich, Eliot Katz, Vivian
Demuth, Sean Allingham, Michael O’Brian, Betsy Fagin, Sarah Sarai, Lee Ann Brown, Tony Torn,
Elisa Miller, Jonathan Ross, Cynthia White, Molly Crabapple, Laura Weibgen, William Scott, Sparrow,
Thom Donovan, Travis Holloway, Grey Space and Anelise Chen. And a very special THANK YOU to
everyone that has contributed their voice to this document, you give me and everyone else hope, poems
matter, voices matter, people matter!

from THE MAD SONG
by Michael Schiavo
North Bennington, Vermont

From a bright, civic borough I call to you. Let us make room for more weddings. For pie to bet-
ter the pork chops. Though her biscuits are still the best. Cast off these modern times. Yours is bridle,
the old way of thinking. Enjoin the gazebo and gulch. And talk of the tiny things that make up a life.
Loneliness, friend, ever lends an ear. The toilet we share, the towel hanging dry. Above us no authority.
Nor below us fiefdoms nor slaves. Let love break what laws it break ’til every lover sleeping wake.

*
In the autumn of the new American. The eerie of your name beckons. Across the Mall, the rico-
chet, as with all astonishments. The farmer in his field is a banker underground. What November would
be worth the shot? The Reverend Mister Edwards phoned me last night. Preached a dazzling drunken
dry. “We are the epitome of the beauty—and the essence of the crime.” Ordinary fruit for extraordinary
tongues. The redness of our lives is a good thing, not small. Never small. Gladness returns to the confi-
dence man. We shun all sizes anyway.

*

We are the illusory sunbeam. We burn down the laundry and shamble to the river. We itch for
months, ready for your return. We run on for a long time. We destine. We jump a little rowboat to take
us to her shore. We stare into the maw of Leviathan.

*

Be my anxious moment. Only better. Raise a specter. Love is a hazardous chase down crowded
streets. I dream my life in your vicinity. If a nunnery you go, I’ll become a priest.

*

We baffle the monarchy of mules. We are neither firefly nor inferno. We examine his portrait in
the post office. We shuffle to make you smile, motherfucker. We outlast the palace. We too climb the
sycamore to grab the chubby raven. We court the mountaineer. We, in our element, cannot be halted.
We are never in our element. We belie. We have milled through many nettles. We dispense our interior
joy. We are not endowed with happiness, only the pursuit.
WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE

WEEK ONE
Taking Brooklyn Bridge
by Stuart Leonard

I apologize Walt Whitman,
when I was young you spoke to me,
I would sit in the old church cemetery
surrounded by the tombstones of patriots
reading you out loud to the stray cats
and you came to me, you sang to me,
showed me myself in everyone and everything,
taught me a democracy of the soul, to live
in the rough and tumble world with dignity,
to grant that same dignity to the people around me.

I apologize Walt Whitman,
I let the song fade into the din
of everyday life, there are excuses
I could make, I will not make them,
I did not carry your song through the streets,
I worried about the strange looks and awkward postures
I might see in those who needed to hear it.
I got complacent, I was informed,
yes, informed, I read the papers, watched the news,
debated over dinners, knew full well since the days of Reagan
what was happening to the common people like me
that you taught me to love, watched as we were turned
from citizens to consumers to the dispossessed,
and I did not rise up, I did not take to the streets,
did not risk or struggle, did not sing your song
that you so generously gave me.

Over the years I saw the passage of events,
I began to wonder why I and so many others
did not pour into the streets when our votes
were laughed off and our presidency stolen by
fools and plunderers, I wondered why I and so many
others did not challenge the brigand government
when they led us into the unjust war, did not let them
know that the battle we would wage here at home
against that corporate sponsored, oil sopped war of lies
would be far more passionate and just,
I began to wonder why so many citizens did not see that
they were being sold out, duped with the frivolous,
hyped by the hollow, bankrupted by spurious ideologies.

And this unrest began to churn within me,
as I watched the fall of the people, watched
as the great common people were being baited